Pencil is animation and drawing software. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animations, or cartoons, using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source for you to create your animation.
Time Line A Pencil document is organized in layers. There are currently four types of layers: bitmap image, vector image, sound and camera. The Time Line window at the bottom of the screen shows the existing layers. By default, a new document contains a bitmap layer and a vector layer on top of it, but you can add and delete layers as you wish (using either the or buttons next to “Layers”, or the menu Layer).
The names of the layers can be changed to represent what you've put in each by double-clicking on the name of the layer in the timeline. A window will pop up, allowing you to edit the layer's name. Click OK when you have changed it to the name you want and the new name will appear in the timeline.
Layers To select a layer that you want to edit, just click on it in the layer list (or use the up and down arrows). You can change the layer order by dragging their name. The order affects the way image layers are displayed on top of each other; it does not affect the sound and camera layers. Layer properties, such as their name, can be changed by double-clicking on the name (see above).
Layers can be activated or deactivated by clicking the circle at the very left of their icon. A deactivated image layer is hidden from the canvas view.
Drawing The first thing you might want do to with Pencil is drawing. In fact, disregarding the tracks and animation controls in the time line (which can be all hidden by dragging the vertical separator in the time line), one can use Pencil as a drawing program. Using the standard drawing tools (pen, pencil, brush, paint bucket…), you can draw a picture in one of the image layers. By default, the first selected layer in a new document is a bitmap image layer. Note that you can draw anywhere inside the main window: it is a canvas with unlimited space.
Time Line
A Pencil document is organized in layers. There are currently four types of layers: bitmap image, vector image, sound and camera. The Time Line window at the bottom of the screen shows the existing layers. By default, a new document contains a bitmap layer and a vector layer on top of it, but you can add and delete layers as you wish (using either the or buttons next to “Layers”, or the menu Layer).
The names of the layers can be changed to represent what you've put in each by double-clicking on the name of the layer in the timeline. A window will pop up, allowing you to edit the layer's name. Click OK when you have changed it to the name you want and the new name will appear in the timeline.
Layers
To select a layer that you want to edit, just click on it in the layer list (or use the up and down arrows). You can change the layer order by dragging their name. The order affects the way image layers are displayed on top of each other; it does not affect the sound and camera layers. Layer properties, such as their name, can be changed by double-clicking on the name (see above).
Layers can be activated or deactivated by clicking the circle at the very left of their icon. A deactivated image layer is hidden from the canvas view.
Drawing
The first thing you might want do to with Pencil is drawing. In fact, disregarding the tracks and animation controls in the time line (which can be all hidden by dragging the vertical separator in the time line), one can use Pencil as a drawing program. Using the standard drawing tools (pen, pencil, brush, paint bucket…), you can draw a picture in one of the image layers. By default, the first selected layer in a new document is a bitmap image layer. Note that you can draw anywhere inside the main window: it is a canvas with unlimited space.
See the Pencil user guide for more information – http://pencil-animation.org/wiki/doku.php?id=en:users:manual:0.4.3b:index
Steps